Not so fast Kamla

Hours after new Trinidadian Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said the oil and gas-dependent country is turning attention to Caribbean neighbors, especially for gas supplies, the man she wrested the job from in general elections in late April says prospects for a quick solution are very remote.

Stuart Young, a former energy minister and defeated prime ministerial candidate, issued a word of “caution” to the government and locals hoping for a quick fix to rapidly declining gas production. He suggested that obtaining supplies from Grenada, Guyana, and Suriname is either a long-term prospect or fraught with cross-border problems.

He spoke at a press conference on Monday. Young served as Prime Minister for under six weeks when his People’s National Movement (PNM) lost the April 28 general elections.

Persad-Bissessar had said as she unveiled her new cabinet at the weekend that the federation with Tobago is turning its focus on getting supplies from Grenada, where there are still unproven deposits of gas from a single well drilled but not appraised or developed back in 2017.

She announced plans to almost immediately send new Minister of Energy Roodal Moonilal to the island for talks with top officials. The PM also said negotiations with Guyana, which is currently producing large quantities of oil and gas, are on the cards as a priority project. The same is true of Suriname, where production is not expected to commence before mid-2028.

However, Young urged authorities not to lift the ban and later dashed locals’ hopes, as none of the identified prospects in the neighboring states are at an advanced stage to benefit T&T.

“However, the facts are that this one well was drilled in a field called Nutmeg (in Grenada). Right now, there are no proven reserves. This is very, very far away from commercialization. So, to commercialize and to bring any such reserves to market is simply, not at this stage, a feasible concept,” he warned.

The simmering debate about how the federation will survive economically without large gas finds stems from the US forcing Trinidad recently to abandon plans to develop the cross-border Dragon Gas field with Venezuela because of sanctions and other problems. T&T had been banking on American approval for this. Persad-Bissessar argues that the future lies with its regional neighbors, which have oil and gas sectors.

Young said that supplies from neighboring Grenada could take up to 10-15 years to reach Trinidad. “So, I am simply cautioning and saying to T&T at this stage, this is very, very far off from being feasible.”

On getting from Guyana’s currently producing oil and gas fields, Young contended that any undersea pipeline would have to eventually pass through Venezuelan waters, “so Venezuela remains in the equation.”

He did not touch on the fact that Guyana and Venezuela are involved in a decades-old row about marine and land border lines, but implied that the pipeline could encounter problems from the Venezuelan side.